Editor’s note: Andrew Cooper is managing director of London-based Research Now.

As most readers will be aware, the development of online panel research has been led by the U.S.Many U.S.companies have established panels with several million members and have seen their collective online share of the survey research market grow from 9 percent in 2000 to 29 percent today.

Historically the hungriest adopter of the Internet, the U.S.remains a global leader in Internet penetration and is now seeing its large base of dial-up users make the move to broadband in significant numbers. This conversion to high-speed access can only be good news for the U.S.online fieldwork industry, which is already worth in excess of $850 million (source: Inside Research, January 2005).

In contrast, Europe’s online experience of market research has been slower to develop and panels have taken longer to build. From a U.S.perspective, this has fostered a number of negative perceptions of European panels. There is a perception in the U.S.that European panels are still embryonic, that they are limited in size and as a result provide restricted scope for research. Some countries are viewed as a lot less developed than others - for example, the U.K.is seen as more online than mainland and southern Europe .

There is also a perception that European panels are much less sophisticated than their U.S.counterparts. Whereas Europe offers generic consumer panels, the U.S.provides a significant number of strong business-to-business panels, e.g., IT decision makers and health care professionals.

Finally, there is a concern that Europe has provided fertile ground for professional respondents, who have infiltrated different panels in large numbers and as a result brought the panels’ integrity and representation into question.

The truth is that while online research in Europe  is still in its infancy, currently accounting for only 4 percent of the European survey research market, it is an industry that has made considerable progress over the past few years. In the right circumstances, European panels are now proving to be a highly effective alternative or complement to traditional market research techniques.

Ability to adapt

Perhaps one of Europe’s main achievements in panel provision has been its ability to adapt to a complex, multicountry, multilingual and multicultural research environment. Whilst the U.S.panel provider is challenged to build panels large enough to represent 296 million citizens, the European panel builder has to be adaptable to cover up to 48 different countries, each with a range of languages and levels of online penetration. Panel size is a good example of how European panel providers have adapted according to specific country demographics. A panel size of 50,000 may be large for a country such as Norway(where it would represent around 1 percent of the population) but would be small to cover a larger country such as Russia. Recognizing that a one-size-fits-all approach does not work is key to understanding online panels in Europe . Fortunately, European panel providers specialized in the European market can now provide advice on this. They can also coordinate multicountry projects from a central point, typically London, to allow seamless multi-country studies.

As in the U.S., the rapid growth of Internet penetration is playing its part in developing good panels. In Sweden, 74 percent of the population is now online and the Netherlandsis not far behind at 66 percent. In Germany, the U.K.and the Republicof Ireland, over half of the population now has some kind of Internet access (Figure 1).

The latest analysis from The Economist Intelligence Unit, which has published an annual e-readiness ranking since 2000 to indicate the leading countries in terms of their openness to Internet-based opportunities, makes interesting reading. The 2004 rankings, published in April 2005, show Western European countries occupying no less than seven of the 10 top spots, with the U.S.edged into second place by Denmark.

The speed provided by broadband development has been a major influence, encouraging a higher volume of daily Internet use and capturing a mainstream, mass market audience, a large proportion of which bypassed dial-up altogether. There are now more than six million broadband subscribers in the U.K.according to Ofcom, the independent telecom regulator, and the European Commission estimates there are now 40 million broadband users in the European Union, up 70 percent on last year.

Aside from promoting panel growth, faster access has opened up a number of possibilities for the online fieldwork specialist, facilitating increasingly complex studies, e.g., ad testing, videostreaming and conjoint exercises.   The business-to-business sector has expanded and companies are now building and selling specialist panels of IT buyers, health care professionals, decision makers and business travellers.

Taking such progress into account, forecasts of 100 percent growth per annum in the European fieldwork market do not seem too wide of the mark. However, before we herald the golden age of online research, other realities need to be considered. There is a wide range of panels offering respondent access and they do vary in quality and size. As online research is relatively new in the EU, some panels have not yet been utilized to their full extent. On a positive note, this means panels are fresh and not over-used but on the flip side not all will necessarily have a large bank of “active” members.

European fieldwork also throws up other challenges. Surveys naturally need to be to be translated and demographic questions, including socio-demographic questions, must be adapted to the local market. To be able to design your research to make it work well in all countries, you need to be aware of the differences involved. A good panel provider will have detailed local knowledge of each of the countries in which they provide panels and buyers should ask for this advice.

When considering using European online panels, it is important that buyers bear such factors and limitations in mind to ensure they exploit the full potential of such fieldwork. They will find that there are good panel partners, with high levels of repeat clients that have the necessary size, coverage and local expertise to deliver a successful EU research project.